Housing benefit and lump sum holiday pay

Hi all. Have an odd HB query and was hoping someone here could help.

The claimant works for a school and only works during term-time. She gets paid every week throughout the year so she has an annual salary and even though she only works 40-odd weeks she gets paid every week of the year.

Her boss has now said that in addition to this she is owed holiday pay. This year she has taken all her holidays during the school holidays (as she has kids) - so no working days off - but as her salary is spread throughout the year she’s also been paid her weekly salary when away. Her boss is thus saying that, as she is also owed holiday pay, they will pay her an additional amount which is ‘holiday pay’ in addition to her salary. This is being paid as a lump sum.

The claimant did not expect this - and understandably is concerned about how this will affect her housing benefit.

My thoughts:

Hopefully, it would be possible to spread the holiday payment across the whole year it technically covers. So instead of her suddenly appearing to have massive earnings for one week and then go back to her basic salary, hopefully it could be treated as if her salary each week was a small amount (1/52nd of the holiday pay) higher. This might cause an overpayment but at least this would keep her housing benefit in payment and save her from having to claim UC.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how this should/would be treated?

I would suggest that she tell the benefits section that her holiday pay is being paid in a lump sum as she has hasnt used any AL during working days - if she asks for it to be taken into account for the period it covers, there shouldnt be a problem.
They may deicide yo use her wages plus a holiday pay amount (based on the annual an=mount0 moving forward to help minimise overpayments - but she will need to contact them to explain - otherwise its likely to be treated as a “one off” payment for that week which will reduce/ end her HB for theat week - she would still have a month to ask for a revision and explain the hol pay covered a longer period so shouldnt be counted as incpme for that week.